My First and Last Experience with a Ouija Board

Dr. Shari Stacy
(My First and Last Experience with a Ouija Board by Dr. Shari Stacy first appeared in the 2010 edition of The Clinch Mountain Review.)

When I was 12 years old, I found a Ouija board hidden in my older brother’s bedroom at the bottom of a trunk.  I got it out and decided to sneak it outside to play with it in the backyard.  The summer day was spectacularly lovely and temperate, with a light breeze blowing through the tall pines I had sought out for their shade and their ability to hide me from prying eyes.  I had attended a Baptist Bible camp a few years earlier and sat through a long sermon about the evils of the Ouija board, so I knew this was forbidden territory.  I took the cool piece of wood out of the cardboard box and rubbed my hands across its smoothness in awe.  The designs, a dark sun and moon on a pale glossy brown background, looked beautiful to me.  I explored the letters lightly with my fingers and the “Yes” and “No” in the corners fascinated me. 

Next, I took out the white plastic pointed thing with the clear flimsy window (I did not remember then that it is called a “planchette”).  I knew that I was supposed to ask the spirits questions and hope they would guide the pointer around the board while my fingers touched it.  Nervously, but with young girl giggles, I put the planchette on the board, tipped it gently with my fingers, and asked, “Is anyone here with me?”  I awaited a response eagerly, but nothing happened.  I repeated my question.  Again, I got the same non-response.  Disappointed, I thought about boxing the game back up in its Hasbro box and getting it back to my brother’s room before he discovered the board was missing.  It was then that I heard my other brother somewhere nearby.  “Maybe I need another person to make contact,” I thought.  I called my 5 year-old brother to where I was at and asked him if he wanted to play a game.  He (“J.”) was more than ready to go along with whatever I wanted to do. 

After I explained that we both needed to put our fingers gently on the white pointer, and wait for it to move around after we asked questions, we began.  I must make it clear that my brother was already a classic underachiever at age 5, and no amount of begging, threatening, or bribing could get him to want to learn his numbers, alphabet, address, phone number, nothing.  “J.” could not write any letters yet, let alone his name or any word for that matter.  Reading to him every day had produced no results.  He would start kindergarten in a couple of months and we despaired that he would not make it through because of his stubborn dislike of memorizing or learning. 

“J.” wanted to go first and he asked the opening question.  I should have also already mentioned that this lazy child was also the little Don Juan of the neighborhood, and loved to kiss all the girls who lived in our small town.  He had multiple girlfriends and I had actually caught him making out (touching and French kissing) another 5 year-old named “Sonja” in our garage shortly before this.  Yes, we despaired over this boy, the youngest of four in the family. 

“Who am I going to marry?” he asked.  He never once thought it was strange that his trusted older sister wanted him to talk to invisible people.

I still remember the cold shivers on that warm day, shivers I feel even as I write this down years later; the pointer began lightly to move around the board.  I started to yell at my little brother that he was cheating and was not supposed to help the pointer move.  But I waited to see what he came up with, this non-spelling child, my favorite sibling.  The first letter was an “N.”  Without hesitation, the planchette then went to “O.”  When it travelled to “B” I began to fear this thing.  I could feel no extra pressure whatsoever from my brother who eagerly watched as the pointer moved on to “O,” “D” and “Y.” 

“Who is it, Sissy?  Shannon?” he asked me excitedly.  This was another of his conquests, an older girl, 6 or 7, who went to church with us each Sunday. 

I was stunned.  I absolutely knew then and I know now that I did not move that planchette, and I know my brother could not have spelled the word “Nobody.”  He asked me again what it said and I lied and said, “Yes, it says ‘Shannon.’”

He wanted another question and it was, “How old will I be when we get married?”  We put our fingers on the plastic and it moved again.  This time the letters “N-E-V-E-R” came up.  “What does it say?” “J.” asked me. 

I literally was numb with fear.  I stammered out that they would marry when he was 21, and he grinned, pleased with that answer.  He kept going, asking, “How many kids will we have?”  The answer: “N-O-N-E.”  (I told him it said “three.”  He never doubted anything that I communicated to him.)  I knew I should stop this so-called “game” but a morbid curiosity had taken over and I let him continue. 

“Where will we live?” he asked next.  “N-O-W-H-E-R-E.”  (“Clintwood,” I told him.)    Then came the last question I let that boy ask.  “How old will I be when I die?”  I froze.  I could not believe a child would even think about death, so I was not prepared for that question.  When the pointer tried to move I pressed my fingers very tightly on it, not letting it have its way.  “You are holding it!” he said accusingly.  He was right and I lightened my touch while dreading the response.  “N-O-W.” 

Tears sprang to my eyes and I leapt to my feet, knocking that horrid witchboard into the grass.  My brother looked scared and asked, "What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing.  It just spelled gibberish.  You are going to marry Shannon and have three children and I will visit you all the time,” I told him.  I looked at that cute child with the Moe haircut and the dimples and those long eyelashes framing big brown eyes and my heart hurt.  I had asked him to play this awful game and now he was going to die soon.   I felt totally responsible for all this and when he left to go do whatever 5-year olds usually do on sunny days, I wept bitter tears.  I gathered the board and planchette into the box and sneaked it back to my other brother’s room.  In a panic, I desperately begged God to spare my little brother and take me instead.  I told him that I was sorry for playing with the Ouija board and to not blame a little boy for my actions.  In my bewildered brain, I had confused God and whatever spirit had given all those “N”-words as answers.  I was bargaining with the Lord for my brother's life.

That night, and for many after, I prayed long and hard for “J.”  I watched him so carefully that summer and well into the new school year, and beyond.  I hovered over him, responding to every fall, every bump, every “oh” that he uttered.  A few days after the Ouija event, my mother, who knew nothing about what we had done, was uncharacteristically quiet and even downcast.  “What’s wrong?” I asked.   After hearing that nothing was wrong, I persisted and Mom said she had had a terrible dream the night before.  Her mother, who had died two years previously, appeared to her and took “J.” from her arms.  When my mom tried to get him back, my grandmother pulled him further away and walked off clutching his arm.  When my mom began to cry out for “J.”, Mamaw just turned and looked at her sadly, while taking my brother down a road toward a bright light.  The nightmare ended there, but it seemed so real to my mom that she began to cry at the breakfast table.  I had not before or since seen her do something like that.  “It’s all my fault!” I thought.  I wanted to confess everything to her then and there but was afraid she would blame me.

For years the Ouija incident haunted me.  I never told anyone about the experience, but lived in fear that though “J.” had not died “N-O-W” as the board had foretold, the other prophecies would come true.  When “J.”, my girl-crazy brother, announced at the age of 18 that he was getting married in a few days to a girl he had met at the restaurant where he worked, my family was aghast but I secretly wished for the wedding.  “If he marries, I will know that those appalling predictions were false,” I thought.  He did marry the girl, and 15 years and two children later, they are still married.

What answered those questions so cruelly in the summer of 1978?  It was not I, for sure.  “J.” could not spell or read.  I will never know the answers with any real conviction, but I do believe it was otherworldly and horribly cruel.  Did it lie, as demonic spirits are known to do?  Or did my constant attention and earnest prayers make a difference in my brother’s life?  I can say, with certainty, that I will never invite an answer from another spirit board.  And I urge others to think long and hard before attempting to make contact with just any force that happens to be nearby and wants to “talk.”

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Spiritualists, a Paranormal Reality or Hoax?

by Shari Stacy

Spiritualism: A movement that began the United States in the 19th century and went on to achieve religion status.  Spiritualists believe that they can communicate with spirits of dead people who have not moved on yet to a higher existence.  More specifically, mediums claim to be able to talk to spirits (ghosts, angels, demons), carry messages to the living, channel disembodied spirits, etc.These are also referred to as trance mediums or mental mediums.  Some mental mediums claim to have a spirit guide, an entity who can help contact other spirits and offer wisdom and moral teaching through mediums.  These mediums sometimes conduct séances in which they allege contact with the dead or guide. 

Physical mediums claim to be able to manipulate objects such as tables (referred to as table tilting), writing instruments, bodies (levitation) and can produce ectoplasm (a filmy substance of paranormal origin) and manifest full-bodied apparitions and body parts (most often a hand).  The physical medium can produce rappings and wall-knocking.  They use instruments such as spirit cabinets, spirit trumpets, and writing slates. 

Spiritualists trace their beginnings to a pair of sisters in upstate, New York, in the year 1848.  Kate and Margaret Fox, of Hydesville, NY, claimed to be in contact with the devil (“Mr. Splitfoot”) and then the spirit of a murdered peddler.  To the astonishment of their family and neighbors, the young women seemed to be able to talk with the spirit who would respond by rapping on the walls.  “Yes/No” answers and responses with numbers and the alphabet were repeated over and over to enthralled crowds.  As news spread of this phenomenon, people from neighboring towns and eventually other states came to experience this other-worldly demonstration.  The Fox sisters became internationally famous and made a fortune contacting the dead (and for some very famous people and heads of state).  Their older sister Leah acted as their guide or manager.

The sisters eventually had a falling out and Margaret made a public confession of the fraud

the sisters had perpetrated on the desperate and gullible: she claimed that she and Kate produced the noises by popping the joints of their toes and fingers.

 She also explained how the sisters, as children, would tie apples to strings and let them hit the floor from their beds at night, much to their mother’s confusion and consternation.  Kate denied it, but both sisters were shunned by their friends and public, and died alcoholic paupers.

Nonetheless, the movement that grew up around the sisters (and the hundreds if not thousands who followed them as “mediums”) led to the establishment of many churches, some of which still exist (such as the First Spiritualist Church in Quincy, MA).  Spiritualist communities such as Lily Dale in New York and Cassadaga in Florida  also still subsist, though the numbers for the spiritualist movement are greatly reduced from the estimated 8 million practitioners in late 19th-century America and England.  (See separate article on Lily Dale.)  The exposure of fraud (led by magician Harry Houdini and others) helped lead to the movement’s decline.

 

 

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Out of Time and Out of Place

Ellen Apple

I first heard an understandable explanation of quantum physics when I was 42 years old.  I experienced an amazing first hand demonstration of the relativity of time at the age of 30.  An experience I have shared with many people over the past 19 years that never fails to earn me one of those looks.  You know the look I mean.  The one that says, “Bless her heart.  She really believes this.  I wonder if she has ever been treated for a psychiatric illness.  She may even be on medication right now.”

As I said, I was 30 years old.  It was the second week of July, 1989.  My then husband and I were moving from Florida to North Carolina.  He left early, no later than 6 AM, with two friends that were helping us move.  Marion was driving a pickup truck pulling a utility trailer with furniture, and Steve was driving a car that we needed to transport.  My husband was splitting his time between the two vehicles, and as an added bonus they had our Irish Setter puppy with them. 

I was awake when they left, and doing a few last minute chores before I left.  I was not coming back to Florida with them for the second load of furniture, and wanted to be sure I did not forget anything.  We had a cat at that time and by the time I had her settled in a carrier and locked the house it was close to eight o’clock. I drove at the speed limit or just below, all the time.  One of my habits when travelling, because I have always been terrified of getting a ticket and having to pay a fine…I have never even had a parking ticket, and just am not a “speedy Gonzales” when I travel.

A tank of gas always got me from Fort Pierce to just north of Jacksonville, and I stopped there for gas and a cup of coffee.  By then it was after eleven, and I was feeling pretty good about the time I was making. 

Just across the Georgia line, I heard a very loud very scary sound from the engine compartment of the car and began to lose speed.  I was at an exit ramp, and pulled off the interstate.  When I came to the bottom of the ramp, there was a convenience store/gas station on the opposite side of the road and I pulled in there.   After I went in the store for a cold drink, and gave the cat a drink of cool water and some dry cat food, I tried to start the car and…nothing.  OK.  This was not good.  I tried to call people in North Carolina to leave a message for my husband and could not get hold of anyone.  Even worse.  OK.  Getting   grimmer and grimmer.  Like any woman would, I cried for a bit, and cussed for a bit, and cried some more.  There I sat, in as big a mess as you can imagine.

As exits off of interstates tend to be, this one was built up with the usual collection of fast food restaurants, fuel stops and not much else.  The road in both directions looked like a two lane going to nowhere.  One of the fast food stops was a Krystal Burger.   I was sitting there, thinking I could walk over there, maybe a quarter of a mile, and get some fat to sooth my sorrows while I tried to figure out what to do. As I sat there, I suddenly saw a very familiar truck pulling a utility trailer followed by a Chrysler New Yorker pulling away from the pickup window.  Let me tell you I took off running and yelling like an idiot across the parking lots between the gas station and the Krystal Burger.  It was my husband and our two friends. 

We fixed issues and made it to North Carolina, behind schedule and worse for the wear but we made it.
And here my friends lies the mystery.  How did they arrive where I was an hour after the car threw a rod – oh yes when I beak a car I really break a car – when they left 90 minutes or more ahead of me and we had travelled the same route?  Even taking into consideration the maybe 10 miles an hour slower they may have driven due to the truck pulling a trailer, they should have not been 2 ½ hours behind me.  And why did I not pass them on I-95? 

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Did It Come With the Board?

Alec Harvey

The following story is true. The names, location, and certain facts have been changed to protect the privacy of the clients.)

While I’ve had a passion for the paranormal all of my life, I’ve been researching supernatural phenomena in earnest for only the last four years, but in a fairly short amount of time I have made quite a few connections with others in the field and, every now and then, researchers I have worked with in the past will call me when they have something interesting to see if I want to tag along – which is how I got involved with case #32.

Ireland, a demonologist I’ve worked with before, asked if I would like to accompany him on a house cleaning.  The background he supplied about the case was textbook – kids play Ouija – Ouija plays back – an entity takes up residence – kids get scared and don’t want to play anymore.  I was in.

We showed up at the house a couple of hours before we were to start.  This is more or less common practice. It allows time to set up equipment, become familiar with the surroundings, interview the people, and gauge the situation.

The family welcomed my participation on the condition I used no cameras. They explained that they didn’t want to be the next big thing on the Internet. That was no problem; I always respect the client’s wishes.

The interviews with the family went well – seemed to be a solid family, but no one knows what really goes on within a family. The two sons, Wayne 13 and Brian 11, often had their friends over. About two months earlier they had bought an Ouija board to “have some Halloween fun.”  Seems the kids got immediate results – which doesn’t surprise. Kids seem to be a favorite target for paranormal activity; again, no surprise and a fact I’m not going into here other than to say that historically, from the Bell Witch to the Deen family, this seems to hold true.

The largest part of the activity was centered in Wayne’s room, the room where the boys had used the board that October night. Activity included loud banging and whispering coming from the room when no one was in it, and shadows moving through the house. Fortunately the entity, if there was one, had not made any physical contact.

After the interviews I did a sweep of the house with my EMF reader, ----- which I find basically useless except for determining  if the house is loaded with unusual electrical flows or  bad wiring that can sometimes render the same symptoms as recorded paranormal activity: hair standing up on the back of the neck,  uneasy feelings,  and so on . The house checked out and I began assisting Ireland with preparations to clean the house.
While there seems to be a variety of methods for rendering a house free of negative energy, Ireland relies on blessed saltwater, white sage, and a large helping of faith for his house cleansings. He starts at one end of the house and sweeps it with the blessed saltwater. He then burns sage in the house and has the residents keep it burning for several days, leaving the remnants in the spot he feels is congested (his term for a ‘sick’ house) for three months. Quite a character, he wears a fishing vest filled with pockets that he keeps his tools in. I asked him once if he had a cross on him and he pulled out a rather large Celtic cross and flashed it at me. I wouldn’t doubt if he didn’t have silver bullets in one of the pockets.

We turned off all the lights and then Ireland stationed the family in the living room – they would play a part later –

sprinkling blessed water at the doorways as each room was cleaned. Ireland and I started upstairs where no activity had been reported, which isn’t necessarily a good thing because some evidence leads researchers to believe the room with the least activity is where the entity nests. I positioned myself behind Ireland with my recorder and held my flashlight up to light his way.

Almost as soon as Ireland started there came three loud bangs from the room below us that were so hard they shook the floor beneath our feet.  The father yelled from the bottom of the steps that it came from Wayne’s room. The ghost hunter in me moved to run downstairs, but Ireland blocked me with his arm, shaking his head “no,” never missing a beat.

We worked our way from the corner of the upstairs room and down the steps. He entered each downstairs room using the same motions with the water, grabbing a fresh bowl he previously prepared as we entered the living room. As we left each room clean a family member took position in the doorway inside of the room and lightly sprinkled the blessed water at the doorway as Ireland had shown them to do. This, Ireland explained, prevented the possibility of the entity tainting or escaping into a room that had been cleaned. We passed Wayne’s bedroom, where the loud knocks originated, saving it for last.

Inside the kitchen Ireland took up his ceremony in the far corner, sweeping through the room and into the dining room through to the hallway and towards Wayne’s bedroom. As we passed each family member he sprinkled water on them and blessed them with no effect. But as he did the same to Wayne, the boy jerked and rubbed his arm against his shirt and screamed out asking what the “hell” was in the water, exclaiming that it burnt.
Ireland lost his bearings for a moment, but then sprinkled some more of the blessed water on Wayne and, rather hatefully, prayed.  We went into the boy’s room and Ireland worked the perimeter then looked at me, pointing to the closet and saying, “Open the door.”

I cautiously pulled open the door, half expecting some dark monster to jump out at us. I watched the darkness inside as he prayed and unsparingly spread the holy water inside the closet. Then we both received an incredible shock. 

Two great eyes looked back at us – solid white eyes as large as golf balls and without pupils. It was like the thing – whatever it was – had been standing there the whole time and slowly opened its eyes. Or perhaps it faded into existence or the water made him visible to us. I don’t know. Maybe it was the light from the night light outside shining in through the window and reflecting off the water drops landing on the clothing hanging in the closet.

The darkness inside and around the thing seemed to swirl. What immediately struck me about the “eyes” was that there was nothing terrorizing about them; on the contrary, the eyes were cool and calculating and seemed to be considering the both of us. Perhaps that is what made them so ominous. 

Neither Ireland nor I moved. We looked into the blackness with the thing looking back at us. I poked Ireland with my elbow and he began his purpose again.  The father, who was stationed at the hallway entrance, yelled at us that my EMF reader (I had left it in the living room) was going off. I didn’t move, but stayed with Ireland and watched as the two large eyes faded into the blackness and the darkness again became still.

Ireland took a smudge of white sage from his vest and lit it. He fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a green bowl like

object and handed it to me. I asked him what it was and then remarked that it looked like an ashtray.  He said that’s what it was and then told me to hold the sage over it, which made good sense. He then said for me to stay and hold it at the closet doorway.  I told him no problem and to just flip on the light on his way out of the room.

With the light on I studied the closet’s contents. The clothing was hanging at about eye-level. Three shelves, one above the other, filled the upper part of the closet and held board games and toys.  I reached in and felt the clothing. Everything was lightly damp from the water.  I reached past the opened closet door to the window and parted the blinds. Outside about 30 feet away and at the end of the driveway was a pole light. I considered the notion again that the light coming in through the blinds could have caused a reflection, and then cursed myself for not testing the glow from my flashlight at the time to see if it might be causing the phenomenon.

Ireland had each of the family members bathe in sea salt beginning with the oldest son. He then went into the kitchen and began preparing some concoction on the stove, which I know has sage, sea salt and cinnamon in it, but Ireland puts in other ingredients he tells me he can’t talk about and then gives a sinister laugh.

He told me he would be spending the night there at the door to the boy’s closet with his concoction. I told him I would sit with him awhile. Wayne came into the room after he had bathed and sit down in the floor with us. 

“Do you think, whatever that was . . .  if it was really something, that it is something we caused or could it do you think it came with the board?” he asked.
Ireland let me know I was fielding that question with a slight nod in my direction.

“Good Question,” I said, and meant it. “Well, the thing is Wayne; we don’t know that there was anything to begin with. There are so many things that come into play, superstitions, imagination . . . your mind has got to make sense of things so shadows and reflections become faces and eyes. Your mind takes in information and does the best it can with it. Do you understand?”

Wayne shook his head yes and was quiet for a moment and then asked, “Do you ever know?”

“No,” I answered, and beneath the safe glow from the ceiling light we stared together into the closet and talked till the morning light came through the blinds.

Ireland took the Ouija board with him when we left to dispose of it.

Ireland or I didn’t hear my EMF reader go off; the family members in the other rooms did. When I went to download the digital recorder onto my computer I found it was fried and so it lies in my top desk drawer with other useless junk. So without any real evidence, I think back to that night sometimes and try to wrap my mind around what we saw, or thought we saw – whichever. Man, I love this stuff.

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The Photograph: A Portal Through Time

Dave Horn
(Dave is the author of numerous stories about the paranormal. He has also appeared on Out of This World paranormal talk radio discussing the many aspects of secret societies)

When considering an image that has made a lasting impact on me, I immediately recall a haunting photograph from the early 1940’s.  By simply looking at the old black and white photograph, you can’t really sense anything extraordinary about it.  It’s your typical 3.5 X 4 inch photo; cropped and bordered with the ‘lace effect’ edges that was so common for the time period.  At closer look, the background reveals a row of houses in an old coal-mine shanty village.  The centerpiece of the photograph is a tall, neat, well-built gentleman.  He is seated in a rocking chair reading the newspaper.  He is wearing what appears to be a tailored and fitted suit jacket with wool slacks.  His shoes look well worn but polished brilliantly.  The only jewelry he wears is a simple wedding band on his left ring finger and a large ring bearing the symbols of a Free-Mason on his right ring finger.  His facial expression is that of a weary man.  His eyes are as keen and sharp as a hawk’s, yet they appear to be filled with soft and gentle warmth that almost radiates toward the photographer.

The aforementioned photograph is simply a picture of my great grandfather H.H. Amburgey.  My great grandfather passed on some twenty years before my birth so I never had the pleasure of meeting or speaking with him.  Growing up, my parents or grandparents never mentioned him.  Simply and sadly, I was quite unaware of his existence.  That is, until a series of unexplainable events started to unfold before me in November of 1992.

It was mid November about 10 o’clock at night.  I was waiting in my parents’ den for my boy-scout leader to pick me up for our annual lock-in at the community center.  It was snowing pretty hard and was accumulating quickly.  The entrance door to the den opened, cold air rushed in and a man entered.  My mother’s initial thought was “Dave’s Scout leader is here”, however, as the gentleman walked further into the house, the clearer it became that he was not who we were expecting.  From the look of shock on her face I realized something was wrong.  I jumped from my seat to follow the intruder down the hallway.  I walked into the hall and turned on the lights.  As the man turned around and looked at me with his sharp intrusive eyes, he simply faded away like a vaporous mist.

I saw the man about the grounds of my parents farm a number of times throughout the years.  After detailing my encounters with him to my parents on multiple occasions, they finally made a connection.  My mother brought down a box of photos from the attic and told me to go through them.  Not knowing what I was looking for, I sifted and sorted through the hundreds of photographs of unfamiliar faces and untold stories of here and there.  I stop sifting now.  Now I stare, losing track of all time and space, completely losing myself inside of this one photograph.  This bone chilling picture of the very man who has haunted me, followed me, and seemingly peered into my soul with those haunting eyes.  A man while living I never met, but now in death, I know very well.

 

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Book Reviews

The Pocket Book of Death: An Unfortunate Look at the End of the Line
By Morgan Reilly and Joanna Tempest
Illustrated by Rob DenBleyker, Dave McElfatrick, and Kris Wilson
Published by HarperCollins (2008)

Review by Dr. Shari Stacy

I think we should look forward to death more than we do. Of course everybody hates to go to bed or miss anything but dying is really the only chance we'll get to rest. –Florynce Kennedy

A friend bought me a fascinating little tome for Christmas that is in the shape of a headstone.  Does he know me or what?  The book is full of interesting and gruesome facts about mortality (below are some of my favorite particulars).  The illustrations are often childish, which adds a nice comic spin to an otherwise rather serious subject.  (Example: One illustration is a connect-the-dots picture with the caption “See what the black plague really looks like!”) 

Bring some of these facts up at your next gathering.  After all, if you can’t talk about death, then you are hanging with the wrong people.  (And if you like what you read here, be sure to go buy the book for yourself.  Better yet, give it to a friend who can really appreciate such a work!)

1.  Tecumseh’s Curse: “Any president elected in a year ending in a ‘0’ will die in office,” based on William Henry Harrison who massacred Native American brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa at the Battle of Tippecanoe (and then their whole village), only to die a month after being elected President of the United States.  Others who have fallen under the curse?

Abraham Lincoln (1860)
James Garfield (1880)
William McKinley (1900)
Warren G. Harding (1920)
Franklin Roosevelt (1940, 3rd term)
John Kennedy (1960)
Note:  Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 but survived the bullet meant to kill him in 1981, and thus (we hope) has broken Tecumseh’s curse!

2. 
    Not only have presidents been cursed, but being a Roman Emperor has also had its negatives:

Caracalla: Killed by one of his mean while taking a potty break.
Commodus: Survived at his sister’s hands only to be poisoned by a mistress who then sent a young man to strangle him. (Wouldn’t it have been funnier if he had died on the toilet? His bust is pictured on the left.)
Valerian: Killed on orders of the King of Persia, flayed, and his dyed skin hung as a decoration in a temple.
Vespasian: Died from diarrhea.           
Vitellius and Galba: Decapitated by their own troops.

3. Suicide:

The 8th leading cause of death for U.S. men (whites, Native Americans and Alaskan Natives have the highest rates).
China is the only country in the world in which women have a higher rate of self-immolation.
In America, women attempt suicide more often than men but males are 4 times more likely to succeed (!).  Come on, ladies.  Are you really trying?
The Golden Gate Bridge is in San Francisco is a suicide magnet (19 people a year, on average, ‘take the leap’).  The body falls 75 miles an hour (4 seconds to go 250 feet), and when it hits the water, the ribs burst open, puncturing the lungs, heart, aorta, etc.  The kidneys are ripped open.  Every bone from the “clavicle to [the] pelvis” is affected.  Finally, 26 people have survived the fall, but don’t count on that as this still makes for a 98% success rate!

4. In a section entitled “Who Lives the Longest,” I learned that the Japanese outlive everyone else on average (82 years)—no big surprise; is it the seaweed?  The United States ties the United Kingdom at 78 years.  Do not move to Africa as the life expectancy for a person from Mozambique or Sierra Leone is only 40, and those from Zimbabwe can expect to live to be a mere 39 years young.
5. Death Penalty, or Execution, Texas-Style:  While 16 states in the U.S. have had fewer than 10 prisoners executed, and other states fewer than 100, the great state of Texas can boast that it has put 405 prisoners to death.

Don’t commit a hanging offense in Delaware, New Hampshire, or Washington, as you can still be, well, hanged in these states.
In Utah, Idaho and Oklahoma, they still use the firing squad for executions.  America is the only remaining Western nation to practice capital punishment.

6. The “recipe” for creating a shrunken head (from the Jivaro Tribe in South America) is detailed on pp. 46-47.  Some of the more interesting directions are ‘boil the head for 30 minutes’ after which time it should be about half its original size, knead the head throughout the next week ‘to prevent wrinkling,’ and put a hole in the top of the head to insert a string so you can wear your trophy.
7.  The authors detail the breakdown of the body after death, and I learned that my stomach will turn a lovely shade of green, my skin will fall off, fluid will drain from every orifice, and I will produce nasty gases (duh).  Oh, I forgot; I am going to be cremated, a much ‘nicer’ choice, right?  That will put me in a growing percentage of approximately 38% of Americans who choose to be charred.  (The rate is an astonishing 99% in Japan.  But then, where would they bury everyone on an island country?  Only 8% of Italians opt for the big burn; the Catholic Church made it illegal to be cremated until 1963, but the practice has been slow to catch on, apparently.)  My ashes will weigh 5% of my weight at death, which means my cremains will weigh. . . . never mind.  But those pretty little urns must hold more than I imagined. 

So. . . .maybe I will instruct my loved ones to turn my ashes into a diamond: it will take 8 oz. of ash and one lock of hair.  The process involves a diamond press, heat, pressure, and $25,000.  Nah, I will opt for the $1500 cremation option in which every bone and tendon in my body will pop, crack, and burst open at about 1500 degrees F, and eventually turn to ash at around 2000 degrees.  What does not burn will be ground to a fine powder in a cremulator (pulverizer).  Okay, so I did not learn all this from my Pocket Book of Death; I have done some research on this process already.   If I had read this book first, though, I might have chosen something more unique, as comic book writer Mark Gruenwald did: his ashes were mixed with ink to reprint a series of his Marvel comic series (Squadron Supreme).

8. Did Walt Disney have himself cryogenically frozen?  I always thought so but was disillusioned by my handy digest of death; he is buried in Forest Lawn cemetery in California.  Walt went the way I am going: cremation.  So he was not buried, frozen, under the Pirates of the Caribbean exhibit, okay?  Ted Williams, the baseball great, on the other hand….  Whole body suspension costs $150,000 (isn’t this what that couple paid to have their dog cloned last year? It was on the Internet so it must be true) while it is a real bargain to only preserve your head: $80,000. 
9. Plastination, anyone?  Okay, last year I went to Mobile, AL, to see a traveling exhibit of Dr. Gunther von Hagens’ work.  He takes dead bodies (of course, I just presumed the ‘dead’ part), mostly from China, and plastinates them.  The process takes about 1500 hours.  I saw a man stripped down to his skin in the pose of a basketball player.  There was a skinless plastic man in the running mode.  I saw a plastic woman cross-sectioned many, many times, from front to back, in layers of an inch each.  Wow.  Do you want to know what these bodies smell like?  Yeah, so did I.  So I sniffed one up close, and it smelled like the shiny brown dehydrated pig ears that I buy for my dog.  Really.  And it kind of looks like that too.  Though more pink than brown.  (If you have read this far, then you are fascinated with the weird and bizarre too, so don’t get all ‘prude’ on me now.)  You can read about this process on pp. 80-81 of THE BOOK.
10.  The last section (bet you wished I had stopped at #8) that I will cover is the money people in the death business make.  I hope the writers did poor research here, because I would like to think that if I drained fluids from a cadaver, and massaged it manually from head to toe, that I would make more than the average salary of $37,840.  Put a ‘1’ in front of that number and it still won’t be enough for me.  The funeral business was dominated by men for, well, forever, until 2003 when 51% of mortuary science graduates were female.  Apparently, women have heard about all that great money to be made in embalming, eh?  And what is a ‘death midwife’?  The authors list it as one of the jobs in the business of death, but fail to elaborate.  I am going to go to Wikipedia now to find out. 

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